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Scottish Minorities Group

PIE was ‘officially’ formed in October 1974 by three co-founders from the Scottish Minorities Group not just Ian Dunn and Michael Hanson who have previously been identified in the press [see further: A 3rd co-founder of PIE?]

Keith Hose took over as Chairman in June at a meeting of the Executive Committee at Ivor Street, Camden, NW1 in June 1975 following PIE’s first AGM in March held in Edinburgh.

According to the NCCL Annual Report 74/75 on the work and membership of the Gay Rights Committee Keith had been serving on the NCCL Gay Rights Committee for the year of 1974 (see below) when he attended the event “First International Gay Rights Congress” organised by Ian Dunn and Derek Ogg for 18 -22 December. Keith attended (on behalf of NCCL GCR or on his own behalf?) and heard Frank Kameny of the US Mattachine Society speak calling for more militancy in the movement.

Interestingly, Parratt’s address in this 1990 Daily Star article is given as Harwood Court, Upper Richmond Road, Putney is just over a mile from Elm Guest House.

All the other original members of the Executive Committee had resigned leaving Keith as the the only real choice. Michael Hanson, a student at Edinburgh University, who had been a member of Scottish Minorities Group and founded PIE all while taking his final exams was leaving the country.

“Keith’s appointment was very much to be expected as he has vast experience of the ‘gay rights movement’ and is very well-known to prominent campaigners. A long serving member of the EC, Keith will be remembered by all those who came to the PIE London gathering in March. Like Michael, he is a dedicated campaigner and is completely open about his proclivities. Having substantial influence in the gay scene, he is also a prominent member of Icebreakers, and is a member of the NCCL Gay Rights Sub-Committee. Additionally, Keith will be remembered by many readers as the author of a highly intelligent article on paedophilia in ‘Quorum’ magazine. He has been the author of numerous other articles and has recently been featured in both ‘Time Out’ magazine and ‘Gay News’. He will shortly be writing a feature article on the aims of PIE and how our organisation is attempting to tackle the sexual problems of pedophiles – at the invitation of ‘Time Out‘.”

Warren Middleton (John Parratt) was a member of the British Library then engaged in research on the works of the Victorian Calamites.

*with thanks to researcher wishing to remain anon for now for finding these documents

Mary McIntosh (1936 – 2013), turning forty, was working at the Home Office Policy Advisory Committee on Sexual Offences in 1976. She would later become Head of Sociology at University of Essex working with Ken Plummer [“Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,”The Telegraph 5 July 2014], a visitor to the Albany Trust’s offices on Shaftesbury Avenue from 1967/1968 working with Michael Schofield, sociologist and Albany Trustee.

“She joined Essex after working at the Home Office Research Unit, the University of Leicester; Borough Polytechnic (now South Bank University) and Nuffield College, Oxford University.” [University of Essex obituary]

Keith was keen to emphasise that he was contacting McIntosh on the basis of them sharing two mutual friends – Nettie Pollard, fellow PIE member and NCCL Gay Rights worker, and Jeffrey Weeks – and their suggestion that he contact her to enquire whether she would like to receive an early copy of the PIE ‘evidence on the law relating for certain sexual offences involving children for the Criminal Law Revision Committee’.

But what is even more interesting than discovering Mary McIntosh as yet another friendly face for PIE residing in the Home Office (from Advisory Policy to Research Unit) is the suggestion that in January 1976 it was stated there was a third co-founder of PIE from the Scottish Minorities Group. So far, it appears only Ian Campbell Dunn and Michael Hanson have ever been named as co-founders in the press.

In the literature Keith Hose encloses for McIntosh the first line states:

“PIE was founded in October 1974 by 3 members of the Scottish Minorities Group, who felt that there was a need in britain for a group of those men and women who are sexually and otherwise attracted to young people below the age of 17. The inaugural meeting of its members took place in March 1975.”

Were the results of the questionnaire/survey collated by PIE taken from their membership form as set out below? This may be the same survey Mary Manning later reports on for Community Care.

Throughout Grey’s correspondence it is clear he places pressure on various people at various times to write letters to the press, as part of his eminence gris role in shaping others to shape public opinion and acceptance of paedophilia. It’s unclear whether Joy Blanchard, David Astor’s former secretary at The Observer, was blackmailing Grey from the moment he brought her to the Albany Trust with him on his appointment in 1962, and/or whether Grey’s ‘achilles heel’ concerned under 21s or under 16s, but Joy was to exert a tight control over him (as she’d boasted to Doreen Cordell) until the onset of a non-malignant brain tumour in 1968.

Three years later, in March 1981, Antony Grey writes to Tony Smythe, to ask him to reply to The Times and Ronald Butt’s article of 26th March captured on Spotlightonabuse here ‘The Questions Unaswered in the Hayman case’. Butt had stated MIND as a ‘pressure group in receipt of government money and support’ was being one of ‘most guilty of conniving at the attempt to make the pedophile ‘movement’ respectable.’

Grey immediately wrote to Smythe (signing as his real name, Edgar, since he and Smythe had been friends for a long time previously “When are you coming round for that long-promised chat?”):

“No doubt you will be replying to Ronald Butt’s allegation (today’s Times) that you and MIND had promoted paedophilia by stealth. We seem to have arrived at the weird situation where anyone who ares to hint that not all pedophiles are sinister, sadistic, evil child-molsteors is promptly denounced for encouraging the practice of paedophilia. The drubbing which free speech, civil rights and common sense have taken over the PIE case is appalling. I always feared that Tom O’ Carroll was hellbent on opening this particular Pandora’s Box, and so it has proved.”

excerpt from Butt’s 26 March 1981 article, The Times

At 9.10pm one evening Tony called round to Antony Grey/Edgar Wright at 90 Uplands Road, Crouch End/Hornsey Rise and left an obliging if slightly sweaty message for Grey to give him a call and a message: “He’s v gratefull [sic] for your letter, but doesn’t think he can take more of this. Sends his letter for you to see.”

Antony Grey’s Report of his visit to Edinburgh 1-4 October 1976 for November 1976 Trust meeting

The Albany Trustees’ meeting of 24th November was momentous for reasons other than Antony Grey’s enthusiastic reporting of his October visit to the Scottish Minorities Group (SMG) in Edinburgh captured above. Grey had that very morning taken a call reporting allegations against the Trust contained in Mary Whitehouse’s speech to the Christian Lunch & Dinner Club, and Angela Willans’ Woman’s Own agony aunt had been introduced to the meeting as a new Trustee, setting her eyes on the first circulated draft of Paedophilia: Some Questions and Answers at the same time as making the acquaintance of some of the other Trustees.

Events subsequent to Whitehouse’s allegations overtook Grey, busy as he was spurring on Sir Harold Haywood who was battling to get Whitehouse to even acknowledge delivery of a recorded letter threatening legal action and minimising Angela Willans’ resistance to publishing the Q&A Booklet under the Trust’s name. But in October 1976, he had been hopeful that the co-founder of the Paedophile Information Exchange, Ian Dunn, two years after it had been established, would come onboard as a Scottish Trustee and perhaps a Scottish branch of the Albany Trust would be established.

Concerns over links between the Albany Trust and Paedophile Information Exchange had already started to surface leading Rodney Bennett-England (future Chairman of National Council for Training of Journalists – but in 1974/1975 Chairman of the Trust prior to Sir Harold Haywood taking charge post-Playland Trial No 2) – to refute them publicly in a letter to The Times, barely seven months prior to Grey’s trip to Edinburgh. Grey was undaunted.

“Discussions with SMG lead me to suggest the formation of a Scottish branch of the Albany Trust, and the addition of one or two Scottish Trustees. Counsellor Ian Christie, who is a frequent visitor to London, would be eminently suitable as a Trustee and one or two others from among those I met (notably Ian Dunn) could also be considered. There is obvious potential for local work and also for fund-raising in Scotland.”

On 1 October Grey had attended a meeting with SMG at their headquarters (no longer Clyde Street – address that appears on the earliest Paedophile Information Exchange Newsletters but at new Broughton Street HQ?) on psychosexual counselling, meeting with Ian Dunn (co-founder of the Paedophile Information Exchange), Jim Halcrow and Dr Alan Rodger.

Dr Alan Rodger (1944 – 2011) was then Clerk to the Faculty of Advocates, the English equivalent being the Inns of Court which barristers have to dine at, belong to and be called to the Bar by* – not yet Lord Justice or Baron Rodger of Earlsferry, a Justice of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, nor indeed yet Lord Advocate or any of the senior Scottish judicial posts he held. In 1972 he’d changed career route, leaving academia and his Fellowship of New College Oxford behind to move back to his homeland, Scotland, to qualify as an Advocate. By 1976, when Grey was discussing possibilities of a Scottish branch of the Albany Trust with Ian Dunn and the Scottish Minorities Group, Dr Rodger had just joined the Faculty.

A decade later he would become a junior government minister under Margaret Thatcher responsible for the running of the Scottish prosecution service – a point worth noting alongside Ian Pace’s detailed collations of material relating to: